Caitlyn Jenner Honored for Transgender Activism: ‘I Am Just Excited About the …

Glamour magazine named the winners of its annual Women of the Year awards, including Caitlyn Jenner, Misty Copeland, Reese Witherspoon and the U.S. women’s national soccer team among the honorees.The former Olympian – who was married to Kris Jenner, 59, for two decades – said: ‘I am just excited about the future for the first time in a long, long time. ‘And that is a nice feeling to have…. Victoria Beckham, billionaire entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes, Planned Parenthoood’s Cecile Richards and the women’s FIFA soccer Team USA round out the Class of 2015, announced on Thursday. On the cover of the magazine’s Nov. 10 issue is Reese Witherspoon, honored not only for her onscreen performances but also for her production company, Pacific Standard.

Also, Leive and Copeland will light the Empire State Building tower in Glamour pink to symbolize women around the world who continue to break barriers. Witherspoon was selected for the magazine’s December cover, to hit newsstands Nov. 10, while Jenner, Copeland and Holmes will be pictured on foldout covers.

Witherspoon, on the magazine’s December cover, is being honored as the Hollywood Hero, for co-founding a production company aimed at film projects with female protagonists (Wild and Gone Girl were winners): “I have this drive from my upbringing to be a doer, not just a complainer,” she says. “I have achieved a certain amount of success, and I felt a responsibility to my daughter and to women in this world to create more opportunities for women.” “I started thinking, Maybe this is why God put me on earth,” she says. “This issue has been swept under the rug for so long. Jenner’s inclusion in particular led to some social media backlash — both because she is trans and because of her family’s wealth and privilege. “[It] certainly gives you an appreciation for the hostility to the trans community that still exists out there,” said editor-in-chief Cindi Leive in response.

Comedian Amy Schumer will open the magazine’s upcoming awards ceremony, while Jennifer Hudson and Ellie Goulding will also perform for the honorees and illustrious guests. That’s what tips the scales for us to win.” Beckham is the Fashion Force, for building an empire out of a first collection of just 10 dresses, then going on to become a philanthropist and mother of four. “I did have to find myself and my confidence,” she says. “And I want to make other women feel the best version of themselves. It’s still Girl Power.” is the Showstopper, the first African-American ballerina to be named principal dancer dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. Meanwhile, her memoir became a best-seller and even her commercial for Under Armour went viral. “Generations of black women and men didn’t have a fair chance in the ballet world; it’s still difficult to be ‘other.’ Understanding that made me want to speak up and represent what so many couldn’t.” Holmes is the Entrepreneur for building blood-testing company Theranos and becoming, at age 31, the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world. “I think every bad thing you could possibly experience in trying to do something like this, we have experienced. But we know why we are doing it — people are counting on us because of what (his technology) means to a cancer patient, what it means to someone who has no ability to afford health care.” “I know it sounds so juvenile, like everybody holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya.’ But I still believe that we can do it.

It can’t just be an I, it can’t just be black people, it can’t just be white people, it can’t just be poor people, it can’t just be victims. Jenner, who turned 66 on Wednesday, vowed to educate herself while educating others through her docuseries, I Am Cait, which was just picked up by E! for a second season. – Charleston Strong: The June shooting at the black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, brought on mass protests over racial injustice.

Alana Simmons, Nadine Collier, Bethane Middleton-Brown, Felicia Sanders and Polly Sheppard lost loved ones and two nearly their own lives, but all, one by one, stood up in a courtroom at the bond hearing for the young, white defendant and declared their anger but not their hate. – Holmes: She founded her fledgling blood-testing company, now called Theranos, in her dorm room after dropping out of Stanford as an undergraduate but convincing an engineering professor to admit her into his graduate research lab. – Richards: The president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America is the daughter of a civil rights lawyer-dad and a politician woman, the late Texas Gov.